MONTREAL.- The Canadian Centre for Architecture announced the reopening of their galleries and bookstore to the public, as of Wednesday, 10 February 2021. The three exhibitions in the galleries can now finally receive visitors.

The Things Around Us: 51N4E and Rural Urban Framework (through 19 September 2021), discusses how and why we should rethink the role of the architect, and explores the meaning of context today. The exhibition, presented in the CCA’s main galleries, is curated by Francesco Garutti (CCA Curator, Contemporary Architecture) in collaboration with Rural Urban Framework (Hong Kong) and 51N4E (Brussels). Both offices work at the seams of urbanization, with projects situated in transitional settlements in Ulaanbaatar, in the new vernacular of rural China, in the transforming centres of Western European cities and in Albania’s shifting public spaces. Comparing their research and design processes, the project questions the extents and certainties of architecture against backdrops of indeterminate notions of citizenship, unstable stages of urbanization, and insecure economies and ecologies.

Audio introductions to the galleries are available online. The conversations are extended in the web issue titled With and Within. The accompanying publication The Things Around Us (CCA/JOVIS, 2021) will be available in April.

The exhibition Eye Camera Window: Takashi Homma on Le Corbusier (through 15 August 2021) examines the window as a spatial and perceptual motif in both Le Corbusier and Homma’s work while calling into question the act of seeing. Between 2002 and 2018, Homma continually photographed the window as a fundamental element of Le Corbusier’s architecture across Europe and Asia while advancing his own investigations of the photographic medium. The exhibition, curated by Louise Désy (CCA Curator, Photography), presents photographic sequences and clusters including a selection of Le Corbusier’s original drawings from the CCA Collection.

A filmed interview with Takashi Homma, in which he expands on his practice and research, has been made available online, as well as an audio introduction to the exhibition in the Octagonal gallery.

With Middleground: Siting Dispossession (through 5 September 2021), on display in the Hall Cases, the CCA explores the spaces in and practices through which architecture continues to be complicit in the dispossession of Indigenous lands. This critical reading of exemplary projects from the CCA Collection reveals everyday spatial and power dynamics that have created middlegrounds but that have not often been acknowledged. The exhibition is the result of a series of conversations between Ella den Elzen (CCA Curatorial Coordinator), Rafico Ruiz (CCA Associate Director, Research), and Camille Saade-Traboulsi (CCA Administrative Coordinator, Publications and Research), joined by Indigenous advising editor Kaitlin Littlechild.